Mother
An admiration of ‘Children’ by Vicki Feaver
(819 words)
In this essay, I will explore how effectively Vicki Feaver, a female poet, conveys the influence of not only a mother but potentially all mothers. The poem presents the relationship between a loving parent and her child, exploring a mother’s desire to provide her child with an upbringing filled with love, care and ambition.
The first two tercets convey the image of a woman who, whether through careless accident or careful planning, believes that her child has been brought into this world to be loved. Feaver uses the pronoun ‘we’ to encompass mothers collectively, while also making the experience feel personal and intimate. The mother is present ‘where they began’, suggesting that the bond between mother and child begins from the moment of birth. The description of the children as ‘red mewling strangers’ acknowledges the unfamiliarity of a newborn while also conveying the child’s vulnerable appearance and persistent crying. Feaver develops this idea further with the phrase ‘they tear our threshold’, suggesting that the arrival of a child dramatically changes the mother’s life. The verb ‘tear’ conveys the magnitude and intensity of the disruption caused by a newborn. However, Feaver balances this sense of disruption with the tenderness of ‘immediately we love them’. The adverb ‘immediately’ emphasises how quickly and instinctively a mother’s love develops, presenting motherhood as a powerful and unconditional emotion.
The next three tercets explore the mother’s love as the child begins to grow. Feaver refers to other people commenting on the newborn, which conveys the genuine pride a mother may feel: ‘we smile and blush’. The verbs ‘smile’ and ‘blush’ suggest happiness, affection and perhaps even embarrassment at the attention given to the child. However, motherhood is not presented as entirely joyful, as the mother must also respond to the baby’s ‘cries’. Despite this, the child’s pain becomes the mother’s pain, demonstrating the depth of parental sympathy and compassion. The child’s emotions appear to become the mother’s emotions, suggesting that the mother becomes almost entirely responsive to the needs of her child. This is also demonstrated through the phrase ‘and hold them tightly’, which conveys both physical affection and emotional protection. The mother’s attachment becomes so strong that she experiences the child as ‘a lost part of ourselves’. This could suggest that having a child allows the mother to rediscover a powerful and innocent form of love that she may have lost during her own life. The phrase also implies that the child becomes an important part of the mother’s identity, reinforcing the strength of their emotional connection.
In the final five tercets, Feaver reflects on the mother’s influence while also encouraging her to consider her own life. The arrival of a new life creates the possibility that the child may achieve more than the mother herself. This is evident in the mother’s desire to give her child ‘all the things we never had’. The phrase suggests that the mother is conscious of the disappointments and limitations in her own life and wants to prevent her child from experiencing the same difficulties. She recognises the potential pitfalls of life and attempts to protect her child from them, shown through the image of walking ‘in front of them with warning flags’. The metaphor of ‘warning flags’ suggests that the mother wants to identify dangers before the child encounters them, demonstrating her protective nature.
Feaver also explores the mother’s regrets through the statement ‘we who have failed to be authors of our lives write theirs’. The metaphor of being ‘authors’ suggests that people should have control over the direction of their own lives. However, the mothers feel that they have ‘failed’ to achieve this, so they attempt to shape and influence their children’s lives instead. This reveals both the love and potential limitations of parental influence. In wanting ‘to make heroes of them’, mothers are not content simply to protect their children; they also want them to achieve greatness and fulfil the ambitions that they themselves may not have achieved. The final image of mothers who ‘wait and watch like gardeners for flowers’ presents motherhood as patient and nurturing. The metaphor of ‘gardeners’ suggests that mothers provide care and support while waiting for their children to develop and flourish. Like flowers, the children have the potential to grow into something beautiful and admired.
Overall, Feaver’s poem portrays many powerful ideas about a mother’s influence over her child. From the moment of birth, a mother’s love affects the way she views herself, her child and the future. The poem suggests that mothers influence their children in subtle but meaningful ways, wanting to protect them from their own mistakes while also encouraging them to achieve their ambitions. Ultimately, Feaver presents motherhood as a relationship characterised by unconditional love, protection, sacrifice and hope. The mother’s desire for her child to have the best possible life demonstrates the enduring love and affection that can exist between a mother and her child.
How Young Learners Learn Languages – True or False
(960 words)
For this writing task, I was asked to give my response to 5 statements about how young learners learn languages. I will answer true or false statements 1- 5 and explain why.
1) Babies are unable to respond until they are at least 6 months old.
Is this True or False?
2) Babbling has an element of the meaning of which the young child is aware.
Is this True or False?
3) Children may sometimes use words in a way different from an adult’s understanding of the language item.
Is this True or False?
4) Grammar rules cannot usually be taught to young children.
Is this True or False?
5) Repetition plays an important part in first language acquisition.
Is this True or False?
1) Babies are unable to respond until they are at least 6 months old. T/F
This is false. From the moment a baby enters the world to eight weeks, the process of language acquisition is in motion. They begin to cry and make little sounds; this exercises the vocal organs and gives them practice in controlling the flow of air through their mouth and nose. They respond to their mother by looking at her when she speaks. If a stranger speaks, the baby will respond differently than to their mother’s voice. The tone, pitch, volume, and intonation of a speaker’s voice make the baby respond differently. The baby shows a response by crying, body movements, babbling, and laughing.
2) Babbling has an element of the meaning of which the young child is aware. T/F
This is true. Language can be said to be a progression of the process which means that there is progressive emergence. Babbling plays a part in this. It can be said that language comes with age and with the form of the body where the child grows and their cognitive senses form. For instance, at 6-7 weeks the baby will be experimenting with coos and chuckles. Then at 3-4 months, the child will start to babble; making rough speech sounds. Most babbling consists of a small number of sounds, which suggests the child is preparing the sounds they will need to speak the language it is exposed to. The baby is aware as the babbling noises tend to closely approximate the language spoken in their environment. When they imitate adult sounds they are scaffolding their language for later development. Learning is intimately linked with the progressive surfacing of a child’s vocabulary and syntax.
3) Children may sometimes use words in a way different from an adult’s understanding of the language item. T/F
This is true. Younger children do not have an adult’s understanding of language; they have their own way of saying things as far as they approximate them. They are born with a special ability to discover for themselves the underlying rules for their language system. For example, a child can tell you in his verbal sounds that the dog their family has, has gone outside. He may say ‘doggie’ and point or say ‘doggie out’. This utterance may just be a few grunts but significantly the point of it is; is that the child is telling you the dog has exited the house. Speech in children can be recognised by the way a child generally uses one pivot word plus one or two additional words, such as ‘Mummy go shops’, ‘Give dolly’. Telegraphic speech as it is known like this is marked by its own grammar, especially in terms of structure. These pivot words tend to occupy a consistent position in the sentence and the word order reflects the order of adult utterances, the only difference being that in telegraphic speech the less semantically important words disappear.
4) Grammar rules cannot usually be taught to young children. T/F
This is true if we were to say that a teacher or parent tries to formally teach a child grammar. Grammar is acquired naturally; it doesn’t need to be taught so formally especially to younger students. Grammar rules taught formally can be just too hard for some children to comprehend. Learning can be modeled on the natural environment although learning needs to accentuate the rate of language acquisition. Role-play, games that highlight interesting and thought-provoking activities can have grammar subconsciously delivered where the learner is using the appropriate language without realizing that the teacher is teaching a specific grammar point. The child will gradually pick up the grammar rules by interaction. They are not pressured. Grammar becomes secondary to the learners actually trying to speak. Their language can be facilitated by the teacher. There is the fact that if the teacher tries to the child’s sentence to the correct version, it often fails. For example:
A child looks at their dolly and says question and answer.
Child: What colour?
Mother: (You mean) what colour IS IT?
Child: Red
Grammar is a progressive discovery. It seems that the child can only learn when the time is right.
5) Repetition plays an important part in first language acquisition. T/F
This is true. This does not mean a child will learn a language by repetition. Repetition helps by the way of the instructor, be that the mother or teacher who replies to the learner’s comments. The child speaks differently from a normal adult. The repetition is done when the child speaks and the mother or teacher repeats and reinforces the child’s speech with their way of saying the utterance.
Child: Daddy come
Mother: Yes, here’s Daddy
Child: Nice doggie
Mother: Yes, he’s a nice doggie isn’t he?
With this type of repetition, encouraging responsiveness, the child will develop. She will keep the child’s word order and add on the rest. The emphasis is on the child’s meaning and not on grammatical structures.
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How much did Hitler’s upbringing develop his stirrings of hatred and anger?
(819 words)
In the multitude of years that humans have walked this planet, the German leader Adolf Hitler has to be one of the most evil people to ever come into existence. Not solely attributed, but largely as a consequence of Hitler, through his regime of Nazism, an estimated 11 million people were killed which included 6 million Jews. These are staggering figures but why so many Jews? Moreover, why did Hitler bring so much anger against the Jewish continuation as a people in his country and ultimately as a race? Considering Hitler’s hatred of Jews, it is clear this vehemence was not born the day he became The Furher. Hitler’s young life experiences can be taken into consideration. He was a product of his early environment. His burgeoning disgust of the Jewish race and his anger materialized from three experiences; his father, his grandmother, and growing up.
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